4-Night Monarch of the Seas - Suite Life - Picture Review

mj · June 23, 2012

I am continuing to enjoy this review, LittleMissMagic! Love the pictures and everyone looks like they are having a great time.

mp2010 · June 23, 2012

DSCN0364 by vshingl, on Flickr

Saw the Mercer shirt and had to stop and comment - Mercer is my alma mater! :D

CFIGuy · June 23, 2012

Very nice review. Btw, your pictures of the person outside of the dance club was what I was speaking of when I meant party ship. Only one sighting wasn't too bad. It's funny, I notice a lot more falling down passengers in port than I do at night. My personal favorite was at Carlos and Charlie's when a Carnival ship was in. It was 1 in the afternoon, and I was in the same situation as you, where some drunken guys and gals wanted my wife and I to dance and wouldn't take no for an answer. They literally dragged us out there. They grabbed me in some rather inappropriate places, which my wife found amusing. She still teases me about it to this day.

BeeeJay · June 24, 2012

DSC_6233 by vshingl, on Flickr

These girls were sisters, and they had a younger sister who Rachel became quick friends with. They had come from the Sheraton, but they decided to get off with us and go to Senor Frogs.

It's almost disturbing how GIANT those 2 sisters look compared to you two. Just how short are you gals? lol.

liberiben · June 24, 2012

Saw the Mercer shirt and had to stop and comment - Mercer is my alma mater! :D

My Husbands as well, and he is now going back for His Masters.

mp2010 · June 24, 2012

My Husbands as well, and he is now going back for His Masters.

I did my Master's there as well!

LittleMissMagic · June 24, 2012

Saw the Mercer shirt and had to stop and comment - Mercer is my alma mater! :D

Meredith will be golfing for Mercer - she's very excited!

LittleMissMagic · June 24, 2012

It's almost disturbing how GIANT those 2 sisters look compared to you two. Just how short are you gals? lol.

Haha - I'm 5'0" and Rachel is 5'2" - I think Danielle is somewhere around 5'6". They were really tall, though. I'm guessing 5'10" to 6'.

Freo · June 24, 2012

Great review, we have sailed Monarch 2 times.

>>Where is the Owl?<<

Deck 12, starboard.

BonTexasNY · June 24, 2012

You give a great review with wonderful pictures. Congrats to Rachel on her graduation.

Some of our best cruises were on smaller ships; Celebrity Horizon, RCI Majesty and my all time fave, RCI Rhapsody.

LittleMissMagic · June 24, 2012

Then it was time for the farewell -

DSC_6378 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSC_6379 by vshingl, on Flickr

These always get to me. Since it was a shorter cruise, it wasn't as bad, but it was still sad that we were leaving.

LittleMissMagic · June 24, 2012

Here's a picture of our table - minus the kids. They had decided to eat in Adventure Ocean for the evening. They loved Adventure Ocean and made a lot of friends. Apparently, the kids' staff was new to the Monarch, too - just arrived two weeks ago.

It turns out that all of our tablemates had also skipped dinner in the dining room, last night, and that our waiter only had one table of four people. Nassau was a popular miss dinner day. It makes since - we were in port until midnight, and I'm sure a lot of people were doing sunset cruises or eating dinner in port.

DSC_6380 by vshingl, on Flickr

Then there was the dining room farewell -

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They never sang us the Italian love song, though - that's something I enjoy about the longer cruises. You get to know your dining room staff so much better then.

LittleMissMagic · June 24, 2012

They had the last night packed full of activities... but we were also supposed to have our luggage out by 11:00.

Quest was at 11:15, and we always play to win. The other girls had never played Quest before, so I was trying to give them an idea of what to expect without ruining all of the fun. But I knew we couldn't win without guys, and my Dad said he wasn't playing (yeah, right), so we had to recruit random guys in the room.

We were killing it with the runs. The girls loved it, and were excited to run up to the front of the room - everyone got a turn.

I will note that the floor is a terrible surface to do the worm on. It's so hard and solid - there's no bounce to it. I was in PAIN while doing the worm.... I finally just laid there. I also got taken out when I first ran up to do the worm. I dropped to the ground, and another chick ran into me, and I ended up flipping over my head. That was not a great way to start the worm.

I must say, that was the most VIOLENT game of Quest I'd ever played. Bridgette got straight taken out by some chick, and Rachel got knocked out of the way by an adult guy. I was actually surprised at the behavior of some of the people, and I felt like there should have been more security in the audience and less on the stage. Running in a lounge (it was held in Circuit) is dangerous enough - but the people pushing and shoving each other was becoming ridiculous.

We had such a lead, but it turned out that none of our random young men were confident enough in their masculinity to make good women. Our guy absolutely sucked it up. He refused to pretend to act girly - in fact, I think he was trying to walk as manly as possible.

Here are a few pictures -

DSC_6398 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSC_6403 by vshingl, on Flickr

We were all yelling at him, "YOU BETTER ACT LIKE A GIRL!!!"

DSC_6408 by vshingl, on Flickr

He did do a little bend and snap during his solo walk, but it wasn't nearly enough.

DSC_6411 by vshingl, on Flickr

Here's our Quest team -

The boys were so surprised when we didn't win. Umm... you sucked it up!

Besides the violent, my other complaint about this version of Quest was that there were too many small teams. He had us pair up into teams of no more than six (wayyy too small... our team started with 6, but ended up adding on more people). There were almost 50 teams! That's hardly safe, having 50 different people run at the dance floor, especially in the parts that required multiple people... they had six people build a pyramid!!! That was really dangerous. Fun, but dangerous. My suggestion would be to have teams of at least six people.

LBumb · June 24, 2012

great photos

cruising66 · June 24, 2012

If you get a chance, can you tell me what day the welcome back party was on. Did you also keep any of the compass' where you can tell what band was playing in Bolero's? Thanks so much,

Angela

rsantars · June 25, 2012

Great review..Thank you for posting!

mark290 · June 25, 2012

It's almost disturbing how GIANT those 2 sisters look compared to you two. Just how short are you gals? lol.

Great review. I am afraid Beeejay will be a little heart broken now that it's over.

LittleMissMagic · June 26, 2012

After Quest, we stayed in the club and danced. It was the most active the club had been the entire cruise.

Rachel, Bridgette, Blair, Liz, and the three guys they met decided to pull an all-nighter. I headed to bed.

Finally, Rachel got to watch the ship pull into port -

DSCN0395 by vshingl, on Flickr

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LittleMissMagic · June 26, 2012

DSCN0408 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSCN0411 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSCN0413 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSCN0416 by vshingl, on Flickr

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DSCN0420 by vshingl, on Flickr

LittleMissMagic · June 26, 2012

Then it was time to get up and get moving.

DSC_6416 by vshingl, on Flickr

Derik escorted us off the ship. That was nice because there was a huge line. Normally we wait around on the ship, but we were heading to Disney!

DSC_6418 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSC_6419 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSC_6420 by vshingl, on Flickr

DSC_6421 by vshingl, on Flickr

Goodbye, Monarch!

LittleMissMagic · June 26, 2012

Final Thoughts on the Monarch of the Seas

The ship is small, but her size didn't bother me much. It's just the size you need for a short getaway. I didn't find myself missing mini golf or ice skating. On a longer cruise, I probably would have gotten bored, but for the 3 and 4-night itineraries, she's perfect. And having been on a Vision-class ship (Grandeur), I think that the Enchantment is an appropriate replacement. One of the few things I missed about the larger ships were the grand, multilevel dining room which the Enchantment has.

That being said, the Monarch is showing her age through out-of-date decor (it's a little odd because the Monarch actually set sail for the first time as the then-largest ship in the world just a week before my birthday), but the ship is very clean. You can tell that they just aren't investing money into things anymore, though. For example, Ellen turned 17 on the trip, and her parents had ordered her cabin decorations - only to find out that they had run out of birthday cabin decorations and wouldn't be getting any more (and her parents weren't refunded). They also ran out of the insulated Coke mugs on our sailing, and Rachel, Meredith, and I never got mugs... I am hoping that they just underestimated the number they would need for that sailing, but it was a bit of a disappointment to in two cases pay for something that wasn't received.

My biggest complaint about the physical condition of the ship is the elevators! These elevators are almost impossible to catch. They are programmed so that they stop in the order that the up/down arrows on the different floors were pressed, rather than the order of the floors. So if someone on floor six pushed the down arrow before someone on floor 10, it goes down to floor six and skips floor 10. I feel like it wouldn't be that difficult to reprogram the elevators, but I'm also nearly certain that this isn't going to be something that they bother to do since they are retiring the ship.

Now... what's odd is that another one of my biggest complaints is something that usually gets tremendous praise with the Monarch - the crew. But for some reason, I sensed a bit of bitterness in the air from many of the crew members on board. There were numerous occasions where crew members were not only grumpy, but just plain rude.

1. The girls' cabin attendant refusing to move the beds because "they [were] heavy." Do you not want a tip? :confused:

2. Rachel and Meredith were turning a tight corner and almost ran into one of the guys on the entertainment crew. He says very loudly, "What the Hell?"

3. I went to the rock wall to buy a Make A Wish shirt for Rachel, and two of the crew members were swearing at one other - I heard the F word.

4. The last night in the club, Rachel went to the bar to get a Diet Coke, and the bartender took her SeaPass card and started yelling at her that she was 17 and wasn't allowed to be in there. Rachel told him that he was 18, and he just continued yelling at the top of his lungs that she was too young - he stormed off and took her card to security... and yup, she was 18. He didn't even apologize.

That's another problem... the crew kept finding excuses for everything, rather than accepting when they made a mistake. I don't think I ever heard anyone say the words, "I'm sorry." Customer service was lacking.

I don't know the particulars of where the crew is going when the Monarch is changing hands, but this definitely wasn't the happy, friendly crew that everyone is constantly praising. I know that they were undergoing rotations - the Adventure Ocean crew was new, as was one of the dancers that we spoke to.... I'm not sure what's going on, but it did make me question.

Overall, though, we had a great cruise. We really enjoyed our time at Coco Cay, and the suite was a treat that was definitely worth it. Four day cruises, though, are just enough to make you want more.... will I sail that itinerary again? It's not at the top of my list, but I'm not going to say never. I don't like saying never to anything. I'm always open to trying new things and to giving things a second chance.

Edited June 26, 2012 by LittleMissMagic